What is inspiration, and what is theft?
Someone recently reviewed Plague Inc., a fun (albeit simple) pandemic simulator out now on the App Store. Immediately after the review went live several people noted in the comments that the game bore more than a passing resemblance to an iOS game called Pandemic 2.5, released a month earlier. Pandemic’s developer even weighed in on Twitter, saying that Plague Inc. is an attempt to cash-in on its product.
They’re right. Pandemic 2.5 developer Dark Realm Studios has been making virus and plague simulators for the web since at least 2008. Does this mean they own the rights to any and all pandemic simulators? If not legally then perhaps ethically? Or is the issue that Plague Inc. takes a little too much gameplay inspiration from Pandemic?
Some game fans’ general stance is to err on the side of the clones. This is not a popular opinion. But these “clones” are often how entire genres are born! Without generous copying we wouldn’t have tower defense titles, or a thriving MOBA scene including games like Valve’s Dota 2 and Riot’s League of Legends.
Are pandemic simulators, where the goal is to wipe out humanity with the most ruthless virus possible, the next big genre? Probably not. But if studios are allowed and encouraged to grow and iterate on Dark Realm’s initial idea, some very cool video games could be the result nonetheless.
Everything is a Remix
It’s important to never forget that everything is a remix. Especially today. Remixes and memes drive our popular culture. There is probably no better recent example than the extreme success of Minecraft. Mojang’s incredible indie hit has already spawned dozens of clones. Terraria is 2D Minecraft combined with Castlevania. Ace of Spades is Minecraft mashed-up with Team Fortress 2. StarForge remixes Minecraft with sci-fi shooting reminiscent of Halo.
It’s true that for every smart evolution of Minecraft’s basic premise there are plenty of shameless copies. Games that aim to do nothing more than piggyback on Minecraft’s success without actually adding anything to the sandbox building genre. But even some of these clones end up innovating. Games like Eden on the App Store started life as very close Minecraft copies but have since diverged and in some ways improved on their source material. And of course many gamers that point the finger at Minecraft’s copies often gloss over the fact that Minecraft itself was heavily inspired by Infiniminer.
None of this is shocking or new to followers of video games or pop culture in general. For three years following the release of id Software’s groundbreaking shooter Doom, virtually every subsequent shooter was referred to as a “Doom clone,” regardless of how much it actually borrowed from the Romero/Carmack hit. Of course, most shooters of that era did copy heavily from Doom – the label was usually well-earned. But as the genre continued to grow and become more diverse, the term “first person shooter” rapidly increased in usage. Only those few players who think carefully about games, their design, history, and development, think of Halo, Call of Duty or Killzone as Doom clones. The genre evolved, whatever that means. Unlike many of its players, it grew up.
On the App Store no example of game cloning is more well-known than Rovio supposedly cribbing heavily from Armorgames’ Crush the Castle when designing Angry Birds. The comparison comes up in the lede of well-known gaming sites, in IGN comments… all over the internet.
Nevermind the fact that Crush the Castle is itself a very close copy of Castle Clout (remember, everything is a remix). There are many non-trivial differences between the two titles, not the least of which is Angry Birds’ slingshot vs. Crush the Castle’s trebuchet. Trebuchets require two clicks and precise timing. Slingshots allow for small corrections and only require a single quick motion. In other words, Angry Birds is much more accessible and casual-friendly right from the get-go. Combined with the birds’ big personalities (colorful squawking birds are much more memorable than boring boulders) and it’s easy to see why one game became a big hit while the other didn’t, despite their surface-level similarities.
Of course the issue is even cloudier when it’s an already-big company borrowing from the little guy. Zynga’s critics contend that the company’s entire multi-billion dollar social gaming empire is built on a business model of waiting for a small company to come up with an idea that works and then co-opting it. But as a game player or a critic, should this matter? If a team of 53 improves on an idea created by a team of 3, do gamers have an obligation to support the little guy, or should they just play the more polished experience, period?
The bottom line is that not all clones and copies are created equal. Some push genres forward, while others are created by greedy opportunists. But both always follow success, and always will. And who cares about ethics, or protecting innovation, when rampant cloning keeps on delivering more of what we gamers want.
Viral Takeover
But back to Plague Inc. Is it a smart evolution of ideas Dark Realm started in Pandemic? Or is it the latest in a long line of audacious App Store clones? My opinion is that Ndemic Creation’s title is firmly in safe territory. There’s no denying that it bears a close resemblance to Pandemic, but there is also no denying that it improves on that basic disease-spreading premise.
I was initially drawn to Plague Inc. due to its strong user interface. Players evolve their disease from three stylish branching skill trees – symptoms, resistances and transmission methods. This is a clear improvement over Pandemic’s plain menus. Plague Inc. makes more small (but important) tweaks as well. Gamers get to choose which country to start their disease in, instead of having one chosen for them. They have eight disease types to choose from as well, instead of just three.
In a lot of ways this comparison isn’t fair to Dark Realm and Pandemic. Plague Inc. comes out afterwards, makes a few small tweaks, and then gets to ride the wave of disease-spreading success that another small developer kicked off. Right now Plague Inc. is the #2 selling app in the entire App Store, behind only Temple Run: Brave. Pandemic 2.5 is #150 on the overall charts. Based on overall App Store ratings, it now appears that Plague Inc. has sold around 2X as many cumulative copies.
Fair or not, some people would like to see Dark Realm compete on the App Store itself and not on Twitter. Competition breeds innovation and excellence. Dark Realm should keep updating Pandemic with more features and options. Or get to work on a killer sequel.
Right now if gamers ask me for a single pathogen-spreading game for their iPhone it has to be Pandemic Inc. The developers of Pandemic put in the hard work and innovation to launch the concept first, and they deserve credit and compensation for that achievement. Otherwise, why would anyone bother to innovate at all?
Jeff is Editor of jeffwofford.com and the Programmer behind Crush the Castle on iOS platforms. He has been creating games since the dark days of Ultima Online. You can follow him on Twitter.
12 Comments
Tangentially, id also made several very similar 2.5-dimensional games before they made Doom. And for some of them (Catacomb) they used a model similar to what they done much later, where sequels were developed by a different company.
I’ll tell you my issue – there are waaaaay too many tower defence games.
The same thing happened with the game I invented, Planarity. Since publishing it in 2005, it has spawned dozens of clones on multiple platforms.
I don’t mind at all. In fact, I keep an exhaustive list of every clone at http://johntantalo.com/wiki/Planarity#Other_Implementations
The original is still at http://www.planarity.net/
There was/is a Pandemic board game and that was meant to be an iOS game at some point, I do not know if it is relevant because the two Pandemic games seem to be the same name and the same theme and the same concept
Original Article
http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/19/in-defense-of-game-clones
“Original”—such an ugly word. Far too authoritarian, hierarchical. I prefer to think of it as a “sibling” article.
Minecraft is a dumbed down Dwarf Fortress.
“Everything is a Remix” is very true… Your thoughts are never entirely your own. This leads to a fundamental flaw in the concept of “Intellectual Property”.
For a good read try http://mises.org/document/3582/Against-Intellectual-Property
Actually I disagree that “Everything is a Remix”. It implies that a car is really just a horseless carriage, which is really just a horse-drawn carriage, so we might as well all be riding around being pulled by horses. It’s true that nothing is entirely new, but there is such a thing as decisive, valuable innovations. If society wants to promote these innovations, we should protect and reward them.
A car IS essentially a horseless carriage. At least they were in the beginning. The error you’re making is that second leap – that BECAUSE a car is essentially a horseless carriage, we “might as well” be pulled around by horses. How do you get to that point from your first point?
The remixes reflect improvements and refinements. Why should they be ignored just because it’s building on what came before? Do you really think declaring something is a remix is a declaration that we should just stick with the original?
I would disagree that a car is essentially a horseless carriage. A car goes far beyond any kind of carriage. It is a new thing—an innovation. And when a new product is that innovative—has real leaps in technology or insight—then it deserves to be recognized and protected. That’s my point.
Think of the years of invention, the research, the science, and the danger involved in developing even the earliest cars. Anyone involved in designing the internal combustion engine, for example, would certainly be offended by the idea that he or she had merely made just another kind of carriage. If someone else then stole that work, sold it as their own, and profited from it, the original creator would rightly be angry and wronged. If the thief said, “Oh, it’s just a remix—it’s really just another kind of carriage, one that happens not to use horses,” then the inventor would cry foul, because the innovation is clearly more than just the absence of horses. This is a well-understood element of civil justice, and we have copyrights and patents to protect creators.
So I don’t think we should just stick with the original, and I don’t think we should ignore “remixes.” But when remixes are thefts—when they lack sufficient innovation or differentiation from the original—we should punish the thieves. Society is right to insist on this.
Maybe if you had said that Minecraft is in fact a copy of Lego your article had made me read the rest ..